US Marketers Looking To Tea

Nutshell: In the US the market for everything coffee related has been saturated so markerters are looking toward tea. Many new options in tea ( albeit some not so great ones ) are appearing in the United States and the popularity of tea is going up:

True, I live in a smaller city, so I don't even try at the local coffee shops, but even as I travel across the US, I am amazed at how hard it is to get a really good cup of tea. Every once in while I'll be surprised and find a coffee shop that takes tea seriously, but that is not the norm.

America might have a tea market, but it remains to be seen whether that market will mature into a culture. Given my recent visit to a tea room that served sencha at 190°F in twenty-ounce to-go cups, I don't expect this to happen anytime soon.

Still, when you consider where coffee was twenty years ago, it's kind of exciting to think that someday baristas will know as much about brewing temperamental senchas as they would about tamping an espresso.

Well... There is only one way to start something - start it. It's true that, most likely, the growing tea market in the U.S. will be overwhelmed with cheap, flavored, artificial (instant), and over-marketed tea. But this might put tea (not tea bags), as a beverage, into people's heads and, slowly, some of them will start to grow and explore it as a culture.

There are people who are snobby about soda. There is a market of micro-crafted soda in this country. So there is no reason why people won't start to explore the quality world of tea if they demand quality from other, much less "cultured" beverages.

You folks are being too hard on Chas. He is a good guy and is not the problem. He is actually trying to do something about it (building a tea culture) which you should be applauding even if you would go about it differently.

beforewisdom wrote:Nutshell: In the US the market for everything coffee related has been saturated so markerters are looking toward tea. Many new options in tea ( albeit some not so great ones ) are appearing in the United States and the popularity of tea is going up:

Mooniac wrote:Well... There is only one way to start something - start it. It's true that, most likely, the growing tea market in the U.S. will be overwhelmed with cheap, flavored, artificial (instant), and over-marketed tea. But this might put tea (not tea bags), as a beverage, into people's heads and, slowly, some of them will start to grow and explore it as a culture.

There are people who are snobby about soda. There is a market of micro-crafted soda in this country. So there is no reason why people won't start to explore the quality world of tea if they demand quality from other, much less "cultured" beverages.

I like your perspective. A rising tide lifts all boats. Plus, who is to say that America can't discover or create some better trends for tea. For example, would we have organic tea now if it wasn't for American consumers?